Video data and signals generally require a high amount of bandwidth for communication over a wired and/or wireless data network, or over a direct peer-to-peer connection. Furthermore, increasingly ubiquitous utilizations of high-definition video codec standards for television broadcasts, Internet video broadcasts, Internet video telephony, and other multimedia-related applications are consuming and requiring high bit transfer rates (i.e. large bandwidths) over the wired and/or wireless data network for reliable transmission and display of the video data in real time.
In case of Internet-related video broadcasts and applications, image quality degradations, real-time video playback interruptions, and/or other quality-of-service limitations are common due to the large bandwidth requirements in transferring the video data over the Internet. This is especially true for transmission of high-definition videos. Furthermore, some television and other multimedia broadcasters are no longer satisfied with standard digital television standards, or even with the high-definition television (HDTV) standards (e.g. 1080i and 720p), because they prefer to move to higher scan rates (e.g. “4K,” which is approximately 3840×2160 pixels), or higher frame rates (e.g. 120 Hz).
Although various video compression standards are attempting to alleviate the high bit-rate requirements of video transmissions by packing an increased data load into increasingly-overworked channels more efficiently, these improvements are still merely gradual and are limited to some newer compression standards.
Therefore, it may be desirable to provide a bit-rate reduction system that can be utilized for a plurality of existing video compression standards with a high bit rate reduction efficiency, while retaining a high image quality. It may also be desirable to separate original video data into a main layer processing and a support layer processing within the bit-rate reduction system, so that main layer data and support layer data can be separately processed for a high bit rate reduction efficiency prior to transmission, while retaining a high image quality upon decoding and combination of the separated video data at a receiving device.
Furthermore, conventional video compression systems tend to focus on mathematical comparisons of video inputs and video outputs before and after compression, rather than focusing on the visible quality of the video data in bit-rate reduction attempts. Consequently, conventional video compression systems are not typically optimized for retaining visible video quality of the video data relative to bit-rate reductions. Therefore, it may also be desirable to provide a novel combiner processing system and a related method of operation for support layer processing prior to transmission, wherein decisions to reduce bit rates in the video data are based on reducing information in the video data that can be recovered or improved through a video post-processing module in the decoder side to retain a good visible video quality for the end-viewer. The novel combiner processing system that optimizes bit-rate reductions based on retention of the human perception of the visible quality of the video data, instead of mere mathematical input-output comparisons of the video data, may be highly desirable.
In addition, it may also be desirable to provide a bit-rate reduction unit that makes bit-rate reduction decisions based on retention of the human perception of the visible quality of the video data. It may also be desirable to provide this bit-rate reduction unit to be utilized inside the combiner processing system for support layer processing, or with any encoder loop systems.